Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and National Association of City and County Health Officials (NACHHO) released a new resource titled “Indicators of Healthy Aging: A Guide to Explore Healthy Aging through Community
Health Improvement“, which responds to the needs of local health departments (LHDs) and partners to
understand and advance healthy aging through community health improvement (CHI) efforts.

Efforts by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and research by UMass-Boston are noted in the report that includes a broad list of indicators and measures that can be used to address healthy aging through the CHI process. This guide was informed by a comprehensive review of existing literature, data sources, and input from subject matter experts in healthy aging and CHI. The indicators and measures included in the guide are comprehensive and widely available. However, the report notes, there are many other indicators and measures related to healthy aging that were not included due to limited availability and other factors.

This resource is designed to augment NACCHO’s Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships (MAPP) framework, which is the most widely used CHI framework among governmental public health departments and, increasingly, community-based organizations, nonprofit hospital systems, and community health centers that lead or engage in CHI processes. This also serves as a resource for health departments and their partners to use in expanding age-friendly data collection and advocating for leadership support to expand age-friendly public health efforts.

Communities working to become more age- and dementia friendly can use the guide in a variety of ways to engage local public health partners, embed equity, and look to available data to support the work.

The full guide is available here and on the TFAH website.